Ink and Land is an ethnographic account of political and legal struggles over landownership in Papua New Guinea, in which competing factions seek recognition as customary landowners of Wafi-Golpu, a major prospective copper-gold mine. Drawing on extensive archival research, oral histories, court documents and fifteen months of fieldwork, the book examines how different groups attempt to harness resource extraction for their benefit and how, in doing so, they reshape their social worlds through the medium of affidavits, court declarations and incorporation certificates. To analyse this process, the book advances the concept of antagonistic documentality—a form of conflict in which parties engage in conflicting world-building projects through and about documents and, in doing so, create an order of paper that outlasts the disputes themselves. Through this detailed case study, Ink and Land reveals how legal and bureaucratic battles over resource extraction in Papua New Guinea formalise factionalism, consolidate elite control over new sources of wealth, and redefine the nature of groups and landownership. By focusing on conflict over documents as a process of social transformation, the book offers fresh insights into the politics of land, law and resource extraction in the contemporary Pacific.
By:
Willem Church Imprint: ANU Press Country of Publication: Australia Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN:9781760467012 ISBN 10: 1760467014 Series:Asia-Pacific Environment Monographs Publication Date:14 August 2025 Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format:Paperback Publisher's Status: Active
Key Individuals and Organisations Timeline of Key Events Acknowledgements Introduction: Disputing Ink and Land Part One: Theoretical and Ethnographic Background Antagonistic Documentality People and Place: Collective Action and the Making of the Markham Valley Part Two: Factions and their Formation Landowner Associations: On Coming Together and Coming Apart Contingent Decision Making and Robust Stratification: A History of Legal Competition in the Wafi-Golpu Area Part Three: Creating Landowners and Landowner Representatives Making Landowners: Looping Effects in the Wafi-Golpu Region Shifting Responsibility: How Corporate Practice and Law Turns Factional Leaders into Landowner Representatives Anticipating Gold: Spreading Factionalism and Documentation References
